Chapter 2 - The Signature at the Bottom
The chapel smelled of roses, old wood, and the lemon polish the caretaker used on the pews. When Nathan pulled into the parking lot, the first thing I saw was my maid of honor, Claire, standing beside the entrance with a garment bag over one arm and her phone pressed to her ear. She lowered the phone when she spotted us.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, hurrying over. Then she saw my dress. “Avery, what happened?”
“Derek happened.”
Claire's expression hardened, but she didn't ask me to explain in the parking lot. She ushered me inside, where the bridal suite had become a command center of curling irons, untouched pastries, and flowers waiting in buckets. My mother had died when I was twenty-six, and Claire had helped me plan the wedding around the things I'd wanted to keep from her memory: white roses, an old-fashioned ceremony, and the Beetle waiting outside for our departure.
Now the car was gone, and I didn't know whether the day could still belong to me.
Nathan knelt to remove a smear of mud from the edge of my dress with a damp cloth. He worked without fuss, as though he were repairing a torn hem on an ordinary Saturday. When he finished, he looked up at me.
“You don't have to go through with the ceremony today just because everyone expects it,” he said.
“I know.”
“I'm not asking you to cancel. I'm asking you to choose.”
That distinction mattered. My father had always treated my decisions as temporary obstacles to whatever Derek needed. Nathan was offering me the freedom to decide even when he didn't know what I'd choose.
I looked at the clock. We had forty minutes before the ceremony. “I want to get married,” I said. “I don't want to give them the power to ruin this, too.”
Nathan stood and kissed my forehead. “Then let's get married.”
Claire helped me change into a simpler ivory dress she'd brought as a backup. It wasn't the one I'd planned to wear, but it fit, and its clean lines made me feel less like someone who had walked through a disaster. While she fastened the last buttons, my phone rang. The bank manager, Mr. Holloway, was calling again.
I answered in the bridal suite while Claire stepped into the hallway to give me privacy.
“Miss Avery, I need to ask you something directly,” Holloway said. “Did you authorize a transfer of the machine shop property to Derek's company?”
“No.”
“Did you sign a deed conveying your interest in the property to your father?”
“No.”
He paused. I could hear papers moving on his desk. “Your father presented a notarized deed this morning. It appears to transfer the shop to Derek's company as security for a private loan. The document references an earlier family conveyance, but the recorded chain of title doesn't support it.”
My mouth went dry. “Granddad never transferred the shop to Derek.”
“That's what your original deed appears to establish. But without reviewing the original document, I can't tell you whether the bank will recognize it as controlling. The problem is that the deed your father presented bears what appears to be your signature.”
I sat down on the edge of the makeup table. The signature wasn't a minor detail. Granddad had left the machine shop to me, subject to the family arrangements he'd discussed with Dad before his death. I had never understood all the legal language, but I had understood the central point: the shop was mine to run, and nobody could sell it without my consent.
“I never signed anything,” I said.
“Then I recommend you preserve every document you have and speak to an attorney. The original deed may be important evidence.”
“What happens at five o'clock?”
“If the lender proceeds with foreclosure, the shop could be placed at immediate risk. I don't want to alarm you, but this is serious.”
I thanked him and ended the call. Through the open doorway, I could hear guests arriving and Claire greeting them. The ordinary sounds made the news feel unreal. Somewhere outside, the florist was probably asking where to place the final arrangement, unaware that my family's business might be hours away from being lost.
Nathan came back into the room and found me staring at the phone. I told him what Holloway had said, including the forged signature.
He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he asked, “Do you have a copy of the deed?”
“Not the original. Granddad gave me the firebox after he got sick. He said the papers inside were the ones I needed to protect. I never thought Dad would try to use them against me.”
“Then we start with the bank's documents and an attorney. We don't guess, and we don't sign anything because somebody says it's urgent.”
I almost laughed at the simplicity of it. In my family, urgency had always been a weapon. Dad's emergencies became my obligations; Derek's mistakes became my work. Nathan was reminding me that I could ask questions before agreeing to anything.
The chapel coordinator knocked and said the guests were seated. I put my phone away and stood in front of the mirror. My hair was still pinned neatly, though a few strands had escaped. Claire adjusted my veil, then studied my face.
“Your mother would have told you to stop trying to fix everybody,” she said quietly.
I felt the words in my chest. “She used to tell me I was allowed to be angry.”
“She was right.”
I took Claire's arm and walked toward the chapel doors. For the next hour, I chose to be a bride rather than a daughter, sister, or emergency contact. Nathan stood at the altar with his eyes fixed on me, and when I reached him, his smile was so familiar that the morning's chaos receded for a little while.
We exchanged our vows beneath the white roses. My voice shook once, when I promised to build a life with him that would be honest even when honesty was difficult. He squeezed my hands as if he understood exactly why that promise mattered.
After the ceremony, guests congratulated us, took photographs, and asked about the missing Beetle. I gave them a simple explanation: there had been an accident, and we were dealing with it. I didn't want our wedding to become a public trial of my family. I also refused to lie and call what Derek had done harmless.
At the reception, Dad appeared near the entrance, his tuxedo jacket damp at the cuffs. Derek wasn't with him. Dad approached us as the photographer packed away her equipment.
“We need to talk before five,” he said to me.
Nathan stepped beside me. “About the deed?”
Dad's eyes flicked toward him. “This is a private family matter.”
“It's a property matter now,” I replied. “And if my signature was forged, it's a legal matter.”
He lowered his voice. “Avery, I was trying to protect the shop. Derek's lenders were going to take everything. I had to make arrangements.”
“You made arrangements using my name.”
“I was going to explain.”
“When? After the foreclosure? After Derek got the shop?”
Dad looked toward the guests, embarrassed by the attention. “Please. Don't do this today.”
I thought about all the days I'd postponed my own needs because Dad said the timing was bad. I thought about my mother's funeral, when I'd been the one to comfort Derek because he'd arrived late and missed the service. I thought about the car slipping beneath the water while Dad stood laughing.
“Today is exactly when I need to do this,” I said. “You don't get to decide when I find out what you've done.”
He left without another word. Nathan and I remained beside the reception table, surrounded by half-eaten cake and flowers beginning to wilt in the afternoon heat.
At four fifteen, Holloway emailed me a scanned copy of the deed Dad had presented. I opened it on my phone and enlarged the signature at the bottom.
It looked like mine at first glance. The curve of the A, the narrow loop in the v, even the long final stroke were familiar.
But the date beside it was impossible.
The document claimed I'd signed it three weeks after Granddad died, on a day when I had been working a double shift at the shop and had never met the notary whose seal appeared on the page.
I showed Nathan.
May you like
He read it carefully, then handed the phone back. “We need a lawyer before anyone touches that property.”
I nodded, already searching for the attorney Granddad had used. The wedding was over, but the day wasn't finished. At five o'clock, the lender could move against the shop, and I had less than an hour to decide how far I was willing to go to stop my father from giving away something that had never belonged to him.
